


other lives and other rooms

by silklace



Series: The Cottage with a Blue Door Series [3]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Dirty Talk, Gentle / Service Dominance, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Light BDSM, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pet Names, Praise Kink, Referenced prostitution, Trauma, Trauma Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 10:50:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20290234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silklace/pseuds/silklace
Summary: Berlin, 1929. Planned and unplanned, though it’s not really about any of that at all.





	other lives and other rooms

**Author's Note:**

> This story has been rumbling around in my head for ages but I’m still not sure how it became 14K words of Id-soaked porn with feelings. I hope the shape of it is discernible to someone else, at the very least.
> 
> Thank you to the person who so kindly told me "I would read that!" when I vaguely described this fic on tumblr tags once a long time ago.

_He walked up and down the stairs, going into the rooms as though they, too, in how they yielded to him, belonged to an unrecoverable past, and would join the room with the tasseled tablecloths and the screens and the shadowed corners, and all the other rooms from whose windows he had observed the world, so that they could be remembered and captured and held._

_\- The Master, Colm Tóibín_

It had taken six months of planning, a year and a half of effortful saving, a trip to London for their papers, several expensive phone calls to their business contacts, and a very long series of train rides wherein Jimmy discovered something called motion sickness for the trip to Berlin to even happen, which meant, of course, that they’d been at each other’s throats since the hotel concierge gave them an overlong once over that morning and accidentally on purpose dropped their trunks in the middle of the staircase, denting the left hinge of Thomas’ trunk so that it had to be prized open or otherwise rested at a wonky, slightly sad angle until Thomas sat on it and used one of their boots to bang it shut again. 

They’d fought about that, as well. 

“I’m only saying,” Jimmy insisted, loosening the knot of his tie with probably more vigor than was warranted, “if you hadn’t packed three pairs of shoes probably he wouldn’t have had any trouble lifting it, is all.”

Thomas’ mouth thinned to a white line. “I’ll go and get us breakfast,” he announced, in a clipped sort of voice, straightening from where he was attempting to shove said shoes into the wardrobe. “I think you’re probably hungry from the train ride.”

Jimmy made a noise of defiance. “And leave me here?” He shoved his shoulders back into the jacket he’d been attempting to pry himself out of. The train had left both of them looking pale and the weak wintery light coming in through the small window veiled Thomas in a kind of lavender light. He was so beautiful it made Jimmy’s stomach hurt. “I think the hell not.”

Thomas gritted his teeth. “Well, come on then.” He scratched his stubble irritably. “If I don’t get a cuppa…” He left the end of his sentence hanging, dramatically. If he didn’t get to be dramatic at least twice a day, it made him itchy. Jimmy personally felt he was off to a strong start today. 

He rolled his eyes and pulled his dopp kit from his trunk, rooting around in it. “What’ll happen? Will you just like explode into a million smithereens?”

Jimmy was pretty sure he could hear Thomas’ teeth grinding. He swallowed a vindictive smirk and continued, “Will the sun fall out of the sky and the earth tilt off into the universe if you don’t get your morning cuppa?” He kneed up onto one of the beds, which gave a squeaky, frightful noise, and started pulling bits and bobs from the depths of his kit, still searching. 

“Jimmy,” Thomas said, as if dredging every last inch of saintly patience from some bottomless well inside of him. He even looked heavenward, which made Jimmy faintly want to punch him. “What on god’s green earth is so important that you must get it out of your kit right this instant?”

Jimmy sniffed. Then he glared. “I don’t know if it’s escaped your attention, Thomas, but I smell like a train. And like all of the other people on said train. I’d like to put on a little perfume before I have to go out again, if it’s all the same to you.” He found, suddenly, that he was breathing hard, and could not interpret Thomas’ face. Down the hall, he could hear a door opening and closing with a quiet snick. He looked down at his dopp kit. 

“It had, as a matter of fact.” 

There wedged at the bottom was the small canister of solid cologne he’d been looking for. He retrieved it. “Had what?” 

“Escaped my attention,” Thomas said quietly, and when Jimmy looked up Thomas was not standing so far away any longer. He looked very tired; there were smudges of purple under his eyes. Jimmy’s stomach twinged again. 

Gently, Thomas took the compact from Jimmy’s grip. “You don’t smell like a train,” he said, softly and softening. Sometimes at home in the mornings Thomas would bring him toast in bed with a big pat of butter in the middle, glistening and beautiful. He could almost smell the richness of it now, taste the slickness on his lips, with the way Thomas was looking at him. “You smell like -,” here, Thomas leaned in, ran his nose along Jimmy’s jaw, making a satisfied little noise. “Like my Jimmy,” he said. He leaned back to catch Jimmy’s eye, something secret and hopeful in his look. “Like my boy.”

This, Jimmy knew, was patently false. The pair of them smelled like stale cigarettes and train exhaust and travelling bodies. “Thomas,” he said, resisting.

Thomas hummed a soft noise. “You do, darling.” Opening the compact, he murmured, “Let me,” and drew his thumb along the waxy perfume. 

“Thomas, I’m -,” he said, and swallowed the rest of his words when Thomas’ thumb print came to rest on his pulse point, gently touching, as if he were measuring the spike of Jimmy’s need, careful and assessing. He made another deep noise in the back of his throat, and Jimmy thought vaguely of dropping to his knees. 

Thomas steadied him. “When we come back this afternoon, if you like, I’ll draw you a bath,” here, he drew his thumb in a soft arc along Jimmy’s throat, “and undress you,” he switched to the other side, sweeping from the curl of Jimmy’s ear nearly to the apex of his throat, “and run a soft flannel over every inch of you, my darling, would you like that?”

Jimmy’s heart was in his cock. He swallowed. “If it wouldn’t make us late to the meeting,” he said, voice a little breathier than he usually liked, “I’d show you how much I like it, right now, Thomas, with my knees on the carpet.”

“Oh, love,” Thomas breathed, and kissed him, finally. 

They hadn’t kissed in two days, not that Jimmy could admit to Thomas that he still counted it, even now, nearly two years since he’d walked up that dusty path to the little blue door of Thomas’ cottage – two days since they’d kissed, a week since last they’d lain together in bed intimately with each other, an hour since Thomas looked at him like he always did, like he was the best and brightest thing in Thomas’ world. He’d think it now, still, at night sometimes when Thomas was asleep next to him, the softness of his breath taking up all the space in Jimmy’s heart: _Don’t stop looking at me, please don’t look away, if you do, if you do, I might disappear._

Jimmy pulled back finally with a soft sigh. “Right.” He released his hold on Thomas’s forearms. “Right – we should, uh.” 

Thomas smirked at him. “You seem a little breathless, darling.”

“No, no,” Jimmy said, looking around for his hat. “I’m the exact right amount of breath, thanks ever so.”

In the elevator, Thomas touched him, once, very gently, on the small of his back, out of sight of the bell hop, and Jimmy smiled to himself – a secret kind of smile, hidden in the corner of his mouth and aimed at the carpet, knowing that Thomas’ answering smile was also the secret kind, something soft and tethering between them - but by noon, Thomas had spilled tea down his good shirt, and Jimmy’s new shoes were pinching his toes and the train was late or they were on the wrong platform or perhaps both. Also he was fairly certain Berlin was actually hell. 

“It smells of – sewage,” he announced, for the third time in as many minutes, because it smelled of sewage. Also it was giving him a headache and Thomas was apparently pretending to have taken a vow of silence. There was pigeon shit next to his shoe and the train platform faintly swarmed with other people. 

It was like the buzzing of a thousand flies, each of them burrowing under his skin. 

Thomas’ jaw clicked with the effort of his clench. “I cannot even begin to explain how intimately aware of that fact I am, Jimmy.”

“I’m going to find some cigarettes,” he told Thomas, rather than rolling his eyes, which he felt showed near heroic proportions of restraint. 

Thomas’ jaw clicked again. “Precisely – where?”

Jimmy rolled his wrist to indicate, “Fucking somewhere that is not here.”

Thomas pinched his nose. “Jimmy.” Quieter and taking a step closer, “Darling.”

“Oh, don’t fucking call me that when we’re fighting.”

Thomas took a steadying breath. A man in a pinstriped suit jostled them, and then faintly withered under Thomas’ answering glare, which Jimmy found soothing. After the man had moved off, Thomas said, “I’d appreciate your help figuring out this bloody train system, my love.”

“Well, you might have just said,” Jimmy snapped, but he was gentle when he took the map from Thomas’ hand and studied it briefly for a moment before saying, “Alright, this way,” and strode off in the opposite direction Thomas had been directing them. He ignored Thomas’ annoyed sigh and when they passed a tea stall on the way he stopped and picked them up each a packet of cigarettes. 

Silently, they smoked and waited for the train and pretended they weren’t close enough to smell what the other passengers had eaten for breakfast, and when the train announced itself with a sharp whistle Jimmy was strung so tightly he startled hard enough to draw the attention of several others nearby and, face burning and fingers trembling, boarded the train with Thomas at his back looking penitent and concerned. 

They sat on the creaking train and Thomas said quietly, “Jimmy,” like a question or like the start of a sentence and Jimmy didn’t want to hear how it finished.

He said, “I’m fine.” He wished, for the millionth time that day, that there were fewer people around them. All of this would be fine – the trip, the fighting, the goddamn train arriving like a gunshot or like the cracking sound a palm makes when it hits the back of the head – if there were less bodies near him, rubbing against him and making him think of – making him think that – 

He shoved the thought away and ran his hand along the faintly damp edge of his hairline, tugging his hat lower on his forehead. 

Vaguely, he remembered a conversation in their kitchen when they’d decided to come on this trip, Thomas’ mouth twisting sweetly as he’d said, “You know, it’ll be like,” before he would say no more until Jimmy, langorously and giggingly dropping kisses along his face and throat and chest had whispered, “It’ll be like what? Like what, tell me, Thomas,” and, panting and red-faced Thomas had said, haltingly, “I think they call it. A honeymoon.”

Next to him, Thomas’ face was in a small moue of upset and Jimmy’s hands still would not stop shaking, though it was really only a very fine tremble. He lit a cigarette and, wordlessly, switched seats with Thomas so he could blow his exhales out the sighed-open crack of window. Winter’s fingers came in and held him by the back of his neck and would not let go, and mostly he was grateful he could blame his shivering on the chill instead. 

The train ride was not long. He flicked the nub of his cigarette out the window as the engine ground to a slow halt and they left in much the same fashion as they had boarded, Thomas very close against his back. 

Close enough that it made something like panic burble along Jimmy’s neck and spine and abruptly he said, out of the corner of his mouth, “You’re going to get us followed, if you keep that up,” and Thomas stepped back abruptly and then more slowly allowed a foot of distance to appear between them as they exited the station and made their way down the icy knoll where the grass was lank with frost. They trudged towards the little village. It looked not unlike Downton, though as they neared Jimmy could see quite clearly that up close the buildings looked distinctly un-English. 

Thomas did not speak as they walked and Jimmy missed him the whole time. He still had not worked out how it was possible to miss someone who was right next to you but he’d had good practice at it since Downton, where he’d learned to do it every meal with Thomas at his elbow and miles away, untouchable, all at once. 

He considered lighting another cigarette but thought better of it by the way Thomas kept shooting him what he evidently thought were very surreptitious glances out of the corner of his eye. 

Six months ago they’d taken the train to Ripon for a rare afternoon off and vaguely as they’d walked along the path to the theater Jimmy had been thinking of Ginger and how she’d gotten fussy about her food lately and maybe they should plant something leafy to her liking next fall and abruptly before he realized it had found that he was shoving his fist into the soft and fleshy throat of someone he had never seen before. 

He hadn’t heard Thomas call his name but probably he had as he’d inserted himself between the stranger and Jimmy’s fist, hands flying out but not touching. He was all surrender, from the o of his mouth to the 5-pound shape of his eyes and straight through to the flex of his gently raised hands.

Vaguely, Jimmy had realized he was saying, “You’re alright, you’re alright, Jimmy,” but it was like surfacing out of water and everything was backlit by the sun, terrible and ferocious. He could hardly hear his own thoughts. 

“God,” Jimmy had said – only it was more like a choked rasp, a horrible sound, wrenched from the place that knew intimately the shape and shiver of what was happening, and he’d stumbled out of the road, away from the terrible tableau in the middle of the street where Thomas was turning to offer some sort of explanation to the man who looked mostly too bewildered for indignation.

He hit his shoulder against the brick of the alley and dimly registered that one of his palms was scraped from where he’d dragged it too roughly against the wall. Tiny pin pricks of blood shivered up to the surface of his skin. A moment later Thomas had joined him and seeing where Jimmy’s gaze was turned, said, lowly, “Are you – did you hurt yourself?”

Jimmy had abruptly shoved his hand in his pocket and tried to straighten, though the violent trembling made it difficult. In explanation, finally, he’d found the words: “He touched my back.”

“I – what?”

“That man – did you apologize for me?” This was important. He was getting blood on the inside of his trouser pocket, which was also important, because it meant he’d have to scrub it out later, on his knees next to the wash bin. But it was important that – the man knew Jimmy had not meant to harm him. Had not meant to – 

“Only he touched my back in passing and I – everything went. Under.”

He’d flexed his hand in his pocket and felt the wetness of the blood against the dryness of his trousers.

“Under,” Thomas said.

Jimmy swallowed.

Thomas had been standing so close to him, Jimmy could see no one but him. Thomas took up all the space in his vision – until the alley and the main street around the corner and the entire town disappeared against the quiet touch of Thomas’ presence in front of him.

Lowly, Thomas had said, “Where are you right now, Jimmy?”

Sometimes, this is what they did. 

“With you,” he’d said, automatically. That morning, Thomas had kissed him behind the ear on his way to put the kettle on, softly and without speaking. 

A corner of Thomas’ mouth twitched. He moved closer and shielded with his body the way he gently touched Jimmy on the chest, right where his heart was. If anyone did happen to look their way, it could pass for Thomas fixing the lapel of his jacket. 

Almost. 

“With me,” Thomas had said, quietly. “And where are we, love?”

The sun was white hot. Jimmy could scarcely keep his eyes open. “In Ripon,” he’d said, “in some black fucking alley.”

“You thought you were in danger,” Thomas had said. It hadn’t been a question. Not really. 

“He touched my back,” Jimmy had said, and it hadn’t been an answer, not really. 

“You thought, because he touched your back, that you were going to be hurt,” Thomas had said. He’d nodded, gently with his chin, angled close enough that he was almost nuzzling Jimmy’s temple. 

“I thought. But.”

“Where are you, darling?”

“With you, in Ripon.” He’d licked his lips. The rabbiting of his heart was considering what it would be like to go quiet and still. “Not in danger.”

“Safe,” Thomas had breathed, tightening his hold on Jimmy’s lapel. Moving carefully, he’d slid his other palm along Jimmy’s arm and up to the back of his neck, and it was like watching a film, waiting for it, waiting for the infinite pulse touch of Thomas’ fingertips on his skin, and when Thomas did touch him, all of the fight went out of Jimmy as if he’d released a breath he never knew he’d been holding, or crested over the edge of a very deep hole and now had his cheek pressed to the cool, sweet, clean grass. 

Thomas’ hand was curved around the back of his neck. “When I touch you here, my love, it means we’re together and that I’m holding you and you are safe, with me and without me, and that all of the other ones who touched you here and made you feel unsafe are disappeared under my touch.”

“Yes,” Jimmy had said, closing his eyes, finally, because it was – it was just like that.

They’d stayed like that for several long moments – the brick against Jimmy’s back, the tightening hold of Thomas’ hands on him, the sun in his eyes, flint red against his closed eyelids. His heart had no longer been a mad thing in his chest, and mostly he’d felt a bit sleepy. He’d thought of the cinema, cool and dark and waiting for them, and thought probably he could go on again.

When he’d opened his eyes, Thomas had been watching him. He’d said, “I’m kissing you.”

Jimmy had huffed. “Can’t.”

“I know,” Thomas had said, and already he had been loosening his hold and stepping back, flicking a glance over his shoulder. “But I am. I’ve got my hand on your jaw, just gently, and I’m pressing my lips against yours.”

“Oh,” Jimmy had said. “Oh.” He’d licked his lips. His voice had been so low it hardly moved air. “And I, I am.” Something hot had flamed along his cheeks – surely this shouldn’t have been difficult when he said the filthiest things in bed, just last night had begged Thomas to finish on his face because he liked the way it made him feel marked and taken and held, but then, there in the open air – he could hear the chatter of people in the street around the alley entranceway, the sound of a door opening and closing, further off, the rumble of an engine turning over – and the words had felt strange in his mouth. Thomas had been looking at him with his big, wide eyes and Jimmy had said, wonderingly, “I’m kissing you back.” 

Now, with Thomas walking a foot away from him, the smell of Berlin still faintly on their clothes and hair, Jimmy said, very, very softly, “Thomas?”

Thomas glanced over. “Mmm?”

“I’m – holding your hand, did you know?”

Something soft untethered itself behind Thomas’ knowing look. “Ah.”

There was no one directly near them but still Jimmy kept his voice low. “I am, and – we’re walking. Together, hand in hand like. And – I just – once, I bring your palm up once. To my mouth - and press my lips to it.” 

His face was faintly on fire. 

Thomas’ mouth tugged up into a secret smile. “Don’t give yourself a coronary, darling.”

“Shut up,” Jimmy huffed. He was smiling, as well. He felt a little sick from too many cigarettes, and from the drainy feeling that always came afterwards. “Think we have time for a quick stop at the pub before the meeting?”

Thomas pulled his pocket watch out and examined it. “Seems it. We’re early and all.”

“Buy you a pint?” He wanted things to go back to being playful again, the way they had been that morning when Thomas had teased him for getting out of breath over a silly kiss, so he widened his eyes and added, “Sir?”

“Oh, don’t,” Thomas said, looking pained. Jimmy laughed, bright and ringing. 

“Never had German beer before, then?”

“Am I that unsubtle?”

Thomas’ smile stretched wider. “Ah,” he said, “subtle is not the first word that comes to mind when I think of you, no.”

Jimmy pursed his lips. “Well, it’s natural that ‘ruggedly handsome’ would come first. Understandably.”

Thomas’ mouth was so wide it was almost indecent. He tilted his head as if considering. “Certainly handsome,” he said, lowly, mouth quirked to the side. 

“Which is not the same as rugged and masculine and very, _very_ handsome,” Jimmy pointed out, annoyed.

“Oh, so now we’re just throwing around the word masculine, are we,” Thomas said, and perhaps both of them were thinking of the time Jimmy had taken their straight-edge razor to his legs in the bath, and draped the bathing sheet around him as if it were a nightgown, and called for Thomas from the bedroom. The sheet had slipped off so easily around his shoulders, but they’d been too urgent to do anything more than push Thomas’ braces down and get his trousers opened and Jimmy had thought about it for days afterwards, his bare, clean legs wrapped around Thomas while he was still all the way done up in his suit. 

“Just say rugged, Thomas, it won’t hurt you.”

Thomas sucked the foam off his beer. 

“Won’t cost you a thing.”

“You know,” Thomas said, looking at Jimmy and then away, overly casual, “I admire you so very much.”

“Oh,” Jimmy said, even though Thomas told him something along those lines about once a week. “Is it because of how rugged and manly I am?”

Thomas’ laugh was beautiful, though Jimmy felt he really was making perhaps too sharp a point on the whole ruggedly handsome thing. He could just say it, because even though Jimmy liked it best when Thomas put him on his belly and made him his boy, he was still a _boy_. 

Thomas looked out the window again, smile still on his face. “Jimmy, I delight in your maleness.”

“Well,” Jimmy said, shifting in the sticky booth, “I knew that,” which was only partially true because sometimes Jimmy still thought perhaps it were impossible for another man to love him and see him also and still as a man. Of course, he was always underestimating Thomas, though Thomas seemed to have had the hang of him since day one. 

Jimmy took a sip of his beer. “You were saying you admire me,” he prompted, helpfully. 

Thomas tapped one finger on the edge of his glass. “I did say that.”

“In any specific kind of way? Feel free to elaborate at length, I wouldn’t want you to feel misunderstood.”

“That’s very kind of you, Jimmy.”

Jimmy smiled. “I am very generous.”

“Generous, kind, handsome…you really are rather extraordinary, hm?” 

In anyone else’s mouth, it’d be teasing. 

Jimmy swallowed back what he wanted to say, which suddenly was something about being a former renter to boot and also very good at parties, and wasn’t he just the whole package, but he didn’t because mostly he’d gotten better about saying the sharp words that cut his mouth on their way out. Thomas always tried to hold them, too, and they just bloodied his palms until Jimmy felt guilty for that, as well. 

Thomas was looking at him like he’d heard it anyway, and Jimmy felt himself coloring, a blush of ugly heat on his cheeks and nose and he was watching Thomas watch it happen, watch it bloom across his face, and now here they were on their honeymoon, both of them thinking about the three years Jimmy had spent learning how to take cock for money and how he’d convinced himself it had all been fine or even good at times and then it had left him so changed and – and _wounded_ that sometimes he woke in the middle of the night gasping and often he worried that one day Thomas would remember he was filthy and decide he’d had enough, and he jumped so tremendously at loud noises that it made strangers on the station platform look at him like they knew, they knew, they knew, they knew – 

“Certainly am something,” he said lamely, into the quiet stillness, “aren’t I?”

Thomas’ eyes were so very tender. “My extraordinary boy. Where would I be without you?”

Thomas had never figured out that there was no cause to say such things as that to him, which made him unlike everyone else who’d ever had their cock or quim in his mouth.

“Thomas,” he said, intending to put him off, only the word came out more like a love letter. 

Thomas sat back in the booth, eyes still wet with tenderness, and lit a cigarette. He could not stop looking, eyes searching, and Jimmy felt his gaze like a kind of liquid heat. They hadn’t fucked in nearly a week.

“Thomas,” he said again, only this time it meant something completely different, broken off and scorched at the end. 

Thomas exhaled a thread of smoke. He hadn’t looked away from Jimmy once. Sometimes at Downton they used to do this during meal times, before they really knew what they were doing at all, before Jimmy could admit what he was after, pouting and posturing and glancing away with his lids half-lowered. When he could hardly stand it, he’d drag Thomas outside into the courtyard for the last cigarette of the evening, undo his bowtie and the first several buttons of his shirt, and make up increasingly far-fetched reasons for Thomas to stand near to him and look at him. Once he’d asked him to inspect the stitchwork on a button and they’d been so close that a lock of his hair nearly brushed Thomas’ chin. Thomas had obliged him, even as his fingers trembled under the violet moon. 

“Shoddy work,” he’d said, while Jimmy’s breath came like a staccato, visible in the evening, wintry air. “You’ll have to get someone to fix it for you, I think.”

Jimmy had sucked on his lip, watching the careful tracing of Thomas’ index finger along the stitches. “You could do it for me, couldn’t you?” 

“I could,” Thomas had said, voice low, looking very intently at the button. “If you wanted me to.”

His hips had rolled forward, an inch of movement not far or hard enough to put his body into contact with Thomas’ body. It felt like a reflex more than anything else and he’d chalked it up to the chill and having been stuck inside polishing silver all day. He’d grinned at Thomas and plucked the button away. “I want to – god, run under the fucking moonlight until my lungs feel like they’re on fire,” he’d said, nearly mad with it, and Thomas had smiled and straightened. 

“Here,” he’d said, and gestured for Jimmy to take a drag off his cigarette, cherry red at the end and flaring brightly in the night air. “This’ll have to do in the meanwhile, I think,” only it had been a little choked off there at the end, as Jimmy had raised Thomas’ gloved hand to his mouth and sucked on the cigarette, without looking once at Thomas, who had watched him all the while. 

Now, Thomas smiled, knowing and gentle, the kind that turned his mouth down a little at the corners. “So lost,” he said, “Without you.”

“Well,” Jimmy said brightly, as they stepped back onto the platform nearly three hours later, the afternoon sun dying at their backs. “Could have been worse.”

Thomas squinted at him from beneath the smoky veil of his third cigarette since they’d begun their walk back through the dusty village towards the train station, still smelling faintly of sour milk and hay. “How, exactly?” Jimmy felt a surge of affection for the way he worked, and failed, to keep his voice from sounding cutting.

“I can imagine lots of ways, shall I list them out for you?”

“No, thank you,” Thomas said tightly. 

“Personally, I admired his creativity with that last insult.”

“Jimmy.”

“A pair of delicate-looking, garter-wearing, petted-up shop boys, I think is how he put it.” Thomas’ face had gone wooden about halfway through the meeting, but Jimmy had been clocking exit signs since the minute they’d stepped foot in the merchant’s store. 

There was aggressive silence from Thomas as he sucked noiselessly on his cigarette, squinting down the tracks for the train’s arrival. Jimmy wanted to tell him not to stand so close to the line but thought the admonishment might chafe.

Instead, he said with genuine curiosity, “I thought everyone wore sock garters.” The station was not so crowded as it had been before, but there were still pockets of people, looking bored or anxious or shivery. “Perhaps that’s why he was so grumpy with us. Socks keep falling down and all.” He scuffed a little at the platform floor. “Unless of course he was referring to a different kind of garter,” he said, still in that curious, beguiled tone, swaying a little with his hands in his coat pockets, “in which case, first of all, what’s a god-fearing man like himself talking about lady’s underthings in the middle of the afternoon and second of all, perhaps if he simply sated his curiosity he wouldn’t feel the need to sling those kinds of notions around like insults.”

“Jimmy.”

“Mm? 

Thomas peered over at him, finally, face still pinched in tightness. After a minute, his forehead smoothed out and he said, observationally, “I forget you’re not so bothered by that – sort of thing, nowadays.” Of course, by “that sort of thing,” Thomas was referring to being treated like a second-class person, simply for the fact that they preferred cock to quim. Though, truthfully, Jimmy liked both, which hardly anyone really ever understood, or for that matter, believed. 

In Dublin, he’d spent a week in the bedroom of a judge who flicked out extra pound notes right under Jimmy’s nose if Jimmy let him call him a tart or worse while they fucked. Once, they’d been sharing a cigarette in bed, the sheets pooled around their knees and Jimmy’s own come drying on his belly and he’d said, conversationally, a little unkindly, “You enjoy it when I tell you what a pretty thing you are, don’t you?”

Jimmy hadn’t eaten for two days before he’d got to the judge’s house. That morning, the judge had fed him pain au chocolate and scones with heavy cream until he’d felt dozy and sugar-dazed. 

He’d slid down on the bed, eyes big, hovering above the man’s thighs. He’d batted his goddamn lashes. “Why don’t you tell me again and see how much I like it?” 

“And I forget,” he said, now, the wind biting at the tips of his ears, not quite able to keep the steel out of his voice, “that you’re still letting yourself get ruffled by it.” After a moment, he turned away to face the wind, keeping his eyes open until they were dry again. Then he turned back and fixed his coat collar up so it shielded the back of his neck, the sides of his jaw. 

The shopkeeper was an idiot who wouldn’t know a tart if one turned up in a petticoat and heels and danced the foxtrot on his willy. Why should Jimmy give a toss what he thinks? And, besides, well - 

Finally, he worked his mouth and said, lightly, “Suppose we can’t all have the constitution of a reformed rent boy.” It was not that being called a tart and a catamite didn’t sting anymore, so much as it was so dreadfully boring. 

“Jimmy.”

Jimmy said nothing. In the silence that followed, the train arrived with a hollowing kind of whistle, and they queued up with the others on the platform. Jimmy tried to ignore the feeling in his belly that felt like fullness and emptiness all at once. Like he was filled up with emptiness. 

On the train, they stood shoulder to shoulder facing opposite windows, and Jimmy watched the trees, pines and oaks he thought mostly, blur past them on his side. He wondered what Thomas was looking at. He could ask him. He could turn and say, lowly, in Thomas’s ear, “What do you see and is it worth looking at, still, really?” but he didn’t. 

In the hotel room, Thomas did not remove his coat. He patted his pockets as Jimmy sat to undo the laces of his brogues. The hems of his trousers were slurry with dirty snow, and Thomas’ were likely in the same state. He could wash them for him, in the sink, so he wouldn’t have to have dirty trouser hems for the rest of the weekend and during their return home. He opened his mouth to offer, and Thomas said, “I think I’ll get some. Air.”

Jimmy swallowed. “Alright.” He ran his thumb over the knee of his trousers where there was a smudge of melted ice from his shoe. 

“Right.”

“Do you want me to –”

Thomas’ voice was tight with humiliation. “Just – air. I’ll.” He patted his coat pockets again and would not look at Jimmy. Jimmy felt the emptiness was so big inside of him it had swallowed him or he had swallowed it and perhaps it was like a seed that grew a tree and in its shadow he was empty space, voided, un-being. 

He did not look up as Thomas left. The hotel room was quiet and not-quiet; he could hear the steps of someone on the floor above him, apparently pacing, and the sounds of the pipes turning on and then off from the room adjacent. It was not exactly warm in the room and Jimmy felt a shiver run up his spine. He pushed his braces off his shoulders. 

“Right,” he said aloud, into the empty room. 

They fought not infrequently – both of them mercurial enough that spats were largely inevitable, though usually they resolved themselves over tea or fucking or sometimes finding each other in the garden coaxing Ginger out with brown sugar cubes for skritches and company. 

He made a fire in the hearth and passed several long minutes watching the flames before he grew hot in the face and shoved himself away, wishing painfully for whiskey or wine but of course they didn’t have any. He drew himself a bath, feeling a little sour-stomached, and took his clothes off. 

There was a mirror above the vanity, and he could not help but look at himself in it – his winter-pale skin, the scar high on his rib cage that had gone silvery with age, the way his chest hair, sparse, was a shade darker than the hair on his thighs and shins. If he turned a little, he could still see the wine-dark bruise that Thomas had left from the other evening with his mouth on the back of his neck, just below his hairline. 

He got in the bath. A moment later, he heard the front door open. “Jimmy?”

“In here,” he called back, drawing his knees up to his chest. They were pink already from the bath. He slicked his hair back with a little water. Droplets caught on his brow, his lashes, trickled down his jaw.

He imagined how he must look. _Tarting himself up,_ is what he would’ve called it, once. 

Old habits. 

“Are you alright?”

“M’fine.” He sniffed, pressing his mouth against his bicep. He could feel the wet drag of his lip against skin. “Get your air?”

Thomas smiled. “I did.” He began to loosen his gloves. It was the kind of smile that went a little soft around the edges, like he was thinking of something else, or some other time, and Jimmy was not so daft to imagine it was not a time without him in it. 

“You’re still in your coat and scarf,” he observed. 

Thomas’ smile quirked up once. “I am.” He’d worked his hands free of his gloves and pocketed them in his coat. He began to undo the buttons on his coat. “I was in a hurry to return, you see.”

“Oh,” Jimmy said. He noticed that Thomas was not so much in a hurry to get his coat off, though, moving glacially between each button. He shifted in the tub and felt the water lapping at his edges. 

“To return to you.”

“I see.” Another button. 

“Do you?”

Thomas was always doing that – catching him out in half-truths. Sometimes over tea he’d say, “I love you, did you know that, darling?” And Jimmy would smile, and say, “Of course I did,” and Thomas would catch him by the wrist and kiss the place where his pulse lived and say, in that low thrum of a voice, “Do you?” and Jimmy would say, very solemnly, “Perhaps you should tell me again.”

He watched as Thomas judiciously undid another button. He looked – impeccable, which is how he always looked. Jimmy wanted to see him – make noise. Get ruffled. As ruffled as Jimmy felt now, pinked up in the bath and with his prick bobbing between his legs, mouth starting to water for it. And he wanted to be the one to do it to Thomas.

“Forgive my curiosity,” he said, “but are you purposefully moving at the pace of a geriatric tortoise? Only it’s making me want to come over and drip water on you.”

Thomas’ mouth jumped. “Is it?”

Jimmy sniffed. Looked away. “Could get it in your shoes if I tried and really wanted, I bet.” 

“Well,” Thomas said, sliding the last button free of its hole, “your restraint is quite admirable, then.”

“I’m well aware.” He desperately wanted a cigarette and cast around for his packet but realized he’d left them out in the sitting room. Thomas finally removed his jacket and revealed his shoulders, which Jimmy thought was a bit much. He flicked at the surface of the bath water with his forefinger and thumb. When he looked up, Thomas’ shoulders were still there. “I’m the picture of restrained composure.”

Thomas flashed him a look as he undid the button on his jacket, and finally, Jimmy did not look away. He ran a hand through his hair again, felt a droplet of water slick his temple and run a path along his jaw. 

“I see you’ve started without me,” Thomas commented.

“I was – bored.” He rubbed his wet mouth against his knee, wondered if Thomas was thinking yet about how he wanted Jimmy to use it on him, if he wanted Jimmy on his knees or perhaps flat on his belly on the bed while Thomas stood in front of him, every so often directing him to hump his hips against the mattress for a little relief. He swallowed. “And tired of smelling of train.”

He watched as Thomas lay his coat and scarf, neatly, on the back of a chair, taking time to smooth away an errant wrinkle. Jimmy felt a muscle in his thigh jump and he relaxed one leg, stretched it out until his toes touched the other side of the tub. He leaned back, as well. His abdominals and pectorals were glistening a little, from the stream and from the droplets of water. Thomas’ eyes flicked along the stretch of his body, and Jimmy tried to resist preening but thought from the way Thomas’ smile stretched into something fond and approving that he had not quite managed it. 

“How’s the water, my love?”

“Going a bit cool, if I’m honest.” He flicked at the water, again. “Needs topping up.”

Thomas began to roll his shirtsleeves up to his forearms. “I think I could assist with that,” he said, taking a step forward, “if you permitted me to do so, that is.”

Jimmy looked at him. Thomas’ nose and cheeks were flushed a soft burgundy, as if from the chill. 

Or as if he’d run back to the hotel. 

He lowered his lashes and then looked up, once, and said, “I would permit it,” and something had gone funny in his voice, as if all of the love and longing and – ardent desire to submit to Thomas, to please him, to be his _boy_ had taken up place in it, and Jimmy couldn’t hide it if even if he tried. 

Not that he was exactly trying though, as he set his teeth on the knuckle of his forefinger and let his thighs fall open. Thomas’ gaze slid along him like a balm on hot skin, only Jimmy was still burning up inside, heat licking through him from the arches of his feet to the top of his head. 

“Thomas,” he said thickly, “I give you permission.”

Thomas smiled, still with that soft, blurred edge. “I’m so glad,” he said, and stepping forward, dropped to sit on the step stool Jimmy had conveniently positioned nearby. He leaned forward until his forearm rested on the edge of the bath. Everything about his face was so beautiful it made Jimmy’s throat feel tight. 

“Darling?”

This was always the way it happened – Thomas would give him every kindness until Jimmy was practically trembling – practically lifting off the Earth – to spread his legs, to go belly up, to get on his knees – anything to say, without saying, “You can do anything you want to me,” because it made Thomas’ face go pinched and sad, but he meant it – he meant it. Thomas had taught him belonging, and he wanted to show him exactly how much he had learned that lesson, how it was like a guiding star and made everything else go fuzzy and non-essential. 

But he didn’t want Thomas’ face to go pinched and sad.

“You were saying something earlier about helping me wash, weren’t you?”

Thomas’ smile quirked. “Oh, not _helping_ you, exactly.” He dragged his fingers across the surface of the water, leaving little ripples behind that sought out Jimmy’s skin, almost like being touched. 

Almost and hardly at all. 

He shivered. 

“Can’t have that,” Thomas said, noting it and misreading it, and he leaned forward and twisted the tap until warm water burst over Jimmy’s feet. Thomas tested it with his fingers and, satisfied, swiveled until he caught sight of the wash cloth draped nearby. “Tell me if it gets too hot.”

“I will.” 

“Good.” Taking up the cloth, Thomas ran it under the warm tap. “Now, what was it I said I would do for you, earlier, when you were squirming in the sitting room?”

Fuck, Jimmy thought, quite clearly, and squirmed again. Thomas was still smiling. His voice was very firm. 

“That you would – wash me. All over.”

“That’s right. Which means that I need you -,”gently he touched Jimmy’s shoulder with his other palm and guided him to recline back in the bath, until he was extended and bare, laid out wet and clean, and Thomas ran the damp cloth once down the center of his chest, as if admiring, as if he couldn’t help but touch the first bit of bare skin he’d ever lain eyes on now, when Jimmy was purposefully offering himself up for Thomas’ eyes, “to simply…” He trailed off, voice so low he was murmuring sweetly, close to Jimmy’s ear. “What do I need you to do, darling?” It was somehow not a question, but rather a command, of which Thomas would be the one to enjoy the fruits of. Or at least, that’s how it seemed, even when Jimmy was the one being – served. 

“Sweetheart.”

“Thomas.” He was on fire.

“Tell me.” The cloth ran a wet circle along his belly. His cock jumped against his thigh and it was like he could feel the cloth touching him there, with the way Thomas’ eyes jumped down between his legs. 

“Thomas,” he said, faintly whined, and in the early days, Thomas would have only heard the strain and urgency and he would have relented - but now he knew. He knew Jimmy wanted him to take him there. 

“My darling boy,” Thomas said, as if he knew that would be the last prompt Jimmy needed. And it was. 

“Let you,” Jimmy breathed, the words tucked behind his teeth. 

“That’s it,” Thomas said. “Let me take care of you.” He smiled as if Jimmy had given him an enormous and much-wished for gift. 

"You take care of me - so well.”

Thomas smiled, and leaned in closer, until his lips were brushing Jimmy’s. The cloth slid up Jimmy’s chest, rested right below the tender space of his throat. “That,” Thomas said, letting his lips brush Jimmy’s mouth with each word, “is because you are so precious to me.”

It was not the first time Thomas had said it to him, nor would it be the last and yet each time it was like a bell being rung inside of him. He felt it all over, until he was reverberating and hollowed-out with desire. He tipped his chin up, mindlessly, and his voice was breathy with anticipation when he said Thomas’ name for the third time. 

“That’s it,” Thomas said again, and drew his lips down along Jimmy’s throat, kissing his Adam’s apple with particular attention. “Lovely. Unutterably so.”

Thomas washed him slowly, and tenderly, and as promised drew the cloth from the back of his neck to the arches of his feet in slow, uncomplicated attentiveness. Somewhere along the way Jimmy passed from desirous to drowsy, and even though his cock stayed fat and hot against his thigh, he tipped his head back and let his eyes fall closed. The room was steamy and smelled of heat and soap, and Thomas and he talked quietly, mostly about the cottage back home, wondering what Eggy and Ginger and Cat were up to, Thomas murmuring occasional bits of praise for the swell of his pectoral or the delicate spaces between his fingers.

When he was pink and faintly glistening all over, Thomas wrung the cloth out and braced his forearms along the bath edge. 

Jimmy smirked, dozy and heavy-lidded. “You look like an artist, appreciating his finished work.” 

Thomas smiled, the kind where the corners of his eyes creased into faint lines. He had water all down his shirt-front. “Am I so obvious?”

“Always.”

Thomas draped the cloth along the edge. “Perhaps you’re my prize mare, and I’m just a humble farmer, ready to put you to work.” Jimmy flicked water at him, and Thomas dodged it without much effort. “Only joking. Although you are my best ride.”

“You’re a wretch.” Jimmy gave him a one-eyed glare and resettled back against the tub. “You can go back to admiring me, if you like.”

“Mmm,” Thomas said, and Jimmy felt a hand nudge its knuckles down his sternum. He couldn’t see it, but Thomas’ touch was just firm enough that it probably left a faint redness on his pale skin. Marking him up. 

Jimmy flexed his shoulders and relaxed further into the bath, keeping his eyes closed. “I like it when you look at me.”

“That hasn’t entirely been lost on me,” Thomas pointed out. His index finger tugged at Jimmy’s belly button, wringing a squirm from him. 

“Go on,” Jimmy said, voice getting breathy again. 

“Yes, my love?”

“Thomas,” he said, and it wasn’t without frustration. 

He could hear Thomas’ smirk. “I want to give it to you, I just don’t know what it is you want.”

_Everything,_ Jimmy thought, very distinctly. Out loud, he panted, “Oh, you do, you do, god, Thomas. Kiss me – your mouth – please.”

“Oh, darling,” Thomas breathed and then Jimmy felt a hot mouth seal against his own and his eyes were flashing open, his wet hands coming up to grip Thomas’ shoulders as he surged up and towards him in the bathtub. 

“Very – wet,” Thomas mumbled, drawing his forearm down Jimmy’s slick back. 

“Sorry,” Jimmy grunted. He was not sorry. He put his wet hands under Thomas’ collar.

“You aren’t.” Thomas very nearly kissed the smirk off his face. It was unrelenting, until Jimmy could feel himself trembling again all over, and Thomas gentled his hand on the underside of his chin until his mouth was a slack, wet pool for Thomas to dip his tongue into. He moaned, like a desperate thing. 

“That’s it,” Thomas said. He dipped his tongue again into the slit of Jimmy’s mouth, flicked it, and Jimmy thought of – other things Thomas did to him, with that tongue. With that flick.

“Get in the tub,” he moaned beseechingly. 

“Not with my clothes,” Thomas protested. 

“I’ll get out of the tub, then,” Jimmy said, reasonably, and did that, with a sop of water like a waterfall over the bath’s edge. 

“I might as well have gotten in,” Thomas said, but he was laughing, and Jimmy was wet in his arms, and Thomas was kissing his throat.

Five years ago, he’d been in Birmingham, and a man in a pub had looked at him, just once, but in a knowing way, and Jimmy had followed him into the loo, and gotten on his knees, and afterwards, he’d been able to buy a meat pasty and it was the first thing he’d had to eat in days that wasn’t fished out of the garbage bin. He’d finished the meat pasty, and gone back into the pub, and slouched at a table with his knees spread and a certain cock of his head meant to signal something, though even at the time he hadn’t been entirely sure of what. 

“Thomas,” he said, and his heart began to configure itself into something a little less desperate. “I still want to. To do – what, what we talked about doing. When we came here.”

Thomas’ mouth stilled on his throat, and then formed a gentle, steadying kiss. Another followed. “Do you?” 

“I do.” A kiss on his chin, and Thomas straightening. “I think – rather.” He stopped. His fingers flexed on Thomas’ shoulders. “I think, perhaps I wouldn’t be able to go home without – knowing. Without trying, that is.”

“Why? To prove something?” 

He sucked in a breath. Thomas’ kisses had gone moth-wing light. One landed on his cheekbone. Another grazed the corner of his eye.

“Maybe.”

Thomas leaned back. “I’m not interested in proving anything to anyone. Not anymore.”

“To myself then.” He swallowed. “Maybe proving’s not the right word. I want to.” His voice had gone a little wet, which he supposed was fitting. He was still dripping on Thomas’ shoes. He took Thomas’ palm and slid it onto the back of his own neck. “When you touch me here.” He sucked in a shaky breath. The words wouldn’t come. He found he couldn’t look at Thomas’ face, not then. “When you touch me here,” he tried again.

Thomas’ palm tightened. “It erases everyone else’s touch.”

“Yes,” Jimmy said, and closed his eyes, and felt the hot, fat break of a tear on his cheek. He didn’t know why he was crying. A moment later, Thomas’ thumb followed it, and he was tipping his face up towards him. His cock was soft between his legs, and he thought Thomas probably knew.

“Everyone else’s touch,” Thomas said, lowly, thumb still describing an arc on his cheekbone, “is disappeared under mine.”

Jimmy made a sound that he had forgotten he was able to make. It was like relief – mixed in with grief. It was often the sound one heard in the trenches, he realized, and when he came back to himself, surfaced out of that thought, Thomas was watching him. 

“Stay awhile,” he said lightly. He was touching Jimmy’s jaw so very gently. 

“I’m here.” He wanted to reassure him and say, “I didn’t even go away all that long,” only he thought it wouldn’t be so reassuring. 

Thomas nudged his chin up with one finger. His eyes were dark with something he had not yet said. “I -”

Jimmy ran his nose along the side of Thomas’ hand. “S’alright,” he told him. 

“C’mere,” Thomas said, voice quiet, and grabbed the bathing sheet from the bar, sliding it around Jimmy’s shoulders and pulling him back into his embrace. He left room for Jimmy to wiggle his hands free, which was something they’d figured out the first time Thomas had ever cared for him in this way, and Jimmy, with his hands essentially swaddled to his chest and panic rising in his throat, had bleated, “Get the fuck away from me.”

In the bedroom, Thomas undressed quickly and down to his shorts, which he’d only started wearing in the last year or two over his traditional union suit after Jimmy, coming across an advertisement of them in a catalogue, had sucked in a breath and choked on his tea all at once and when he’d recovered thanks to Thomas’ back-patting said, in a winded sort of way, “You wouldn’t look – half-bad in these, eh?” He’d been thinking about Thomas’s legs, all that thigh, but the first time Thomas had worn them he hadn’t been able to look away from Thomas’ chest, his belly, the faint line of hair disappearing underneath the waistband of the shorts. He’d ridden Thomas on top and planted his face between his pecs and mostly been unable to do much more than moan helplessly as Thomas had fucked up into him with the shorts hanging off his ankles. 

Afterwards, with Thomas’ fingers carding through his hair, Jimmy had mused, “It’s not like I’ve never seen you – like that, before. Naked, I mean.”

Thomas made a soft noise. “It’s the – unexpectedness of it, I find.” This was one of Jimmy’s favorite things about Thomas – how he seemed to derive as much satisfaction from giving Jimmy pleasure as he did in talking, sometimes at length, about the why’s and wherefore’s of how Jimmy got his pleasure. Like it was a thing to be excavated, patiently and with soft brushes. 

“Imagine how I felt, that first time.” He sounded a little smug. “Bare-chested practically in the middle of the kitchen.”

Jimmy had rolled his eyes. “Hardly, that.” Thomas’ beautiful chest was just under his cheek and he nuzzled against it, delighting in the firmness of it. “Let me make it up to you,” he’d said, and rounded his mouth into the o of a hot kiss. 

Still, he remembered the shock of raw desire on Thomas’ face, how it had pulled an answering thrill from him. To be looked at, to know one was being looked at, to intend pleasure for the viewer by the simple presence of his body and face. God, he’d even – flexed a little. It was almost embarrassing, in hindsight. How obvious he’d been. How obvious they’d both been. 

He’d gone so far in the opposite direction so as not to look it in the face, that thing between them, and it had ended up costing him – quite a bit. 

The light through the closed hotel curtains was just beginning to speak of dusk and blueness as Thomas lay back on the bed and reached out a hand for Jimmy to join him. The sheets were cool and soft. Jimmy lay with his cheek on Thomas’ chest. He slid his thigh between Thomas’ legs. 

Thomas’ fingers gently brushed along his skin. “This – business trip. Well, you know it was always secondary.” He felt the movement of Thomas’ shrug. 

“I do.” They’d planned it that way. Visiting the merchant had been a cover, more than it had been anything else. 

“It was – foolish of me to get upset. When it was never the real reason we came here.” Jimmy didn’t say anything. “I just wanted everything to be – right. For this. For you.”

“Mmm.”

“’Mmm.’ What’s that mean?”

Jimmy smiled and knew Thomas would feel the tug of it on his skin. “Guess.”

Thomas made a noise of put-uponness, mostly for show. “That you’d have been happy with a day at the pictures and a night spent top to toe in bed, which you’ve apparently decided is the best and only way of doing – that. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

Jimmy angled back to look at him. “Oi.”

“I get a crick in my neck.”

Jimmy huffed. “When you’re sucking me, I think, “The only thing that would make this better is if I had your cock in my mouth at the same time.” And when I’m doing it to you, I think, “The only thing better than sucking Thomas’ beautiful prick is if I were getting a little of his mouth on me, too.””

“Beautiful, hm?”

“Fucking gorgeous.”

“Hm,” Thomas said, looking pleased, though it was hardly the first time Jimmy had called his cock beautiful. He tended to get – carried away with his mouth when they were in bed together. Thomas leaned forward and kissed Jimmy once. “It’s an awful angle on the neck, you’ve got to admit.”

“Fine,” Jimmy said. “Next time, I’ll go on bottom, then, and you can kneel over me and worry that you’re going to suffocate me if you.” He ducked his chin. “Get distracted.”

“Distracted, eh?” Abruptly, Thomas flipped them, so that he was on top of Jimmy and looking down at him. “You lost even the faintest ability to hold yourself up, as I recall.”

“You were taking your time – it’d been. Nearly an hour!”

“Your legs were shaking the moment I put my mouth on the cut of your hip, darling.”

Jimmy felt heat surge between his legs. “Thomas,” he said, letting the priss of his voice catch and flare between them. He wanted Thomas to make a _mess_ out of him, and he looked up at him through his lashes like he always did when he wanted to tell him just exactly that. 

“Weren’t we just,” Thomas chided, with a look of banked heat, “putting a pause on things? Until – later.”

Jimmy let his head thump back against the pillow and took a long breath that did absolutely nothing to quell the wrench of longing in his belly. He sighed. “Best get up then,” he said, and leveraged himself up for one last gentle kiss before letting Thomas kneel and rise from the bed, reaching for his clothes once again, the muscles in his arse flexing and shifting with his movement.

No harm in watching, though. 

The pub was perhaps not best described as a pub. 

“Reminds me a bit of the American clubs,” Thomas said quietly, leaning against the bar and looking around at the expanse of red velvet and gold lacquer that seemed to wrap them in some strange, otherworldly place that was not half so unfamiliar as Downton’s lavishness but at least twice as reminiscent of indulgence. 

It was a place where – pleasure unfolded, Jimmy could see that, and his stomach had given a faint roil when he’d walked in. By the time they’d reached the bar and a man with a greying mustache had looked Jimmy once over from the tips of his brogues to the golden curl on his forehead, the back of Jimmy’s neck had felt like someone had taken a scalpel and dragged its fine shape once, lightly, across the skin there. Thomas was standing very close but not touching him and Jimmy wasn’t certain if he wanted him closer or further and was even less certain about whether or not coming here had been a mistake entirely. 

The bartender pushed towards them two goblets of something faintly green. Thomas nodded at their drinks. “Well, not this part, exactly. Easier to get your hands on that – uh, white powder – than liquor over there.” 

This caught Jimmy’s attention. “Have you – did you, while you were over there?”

“Er, no,” Thomas said. The tips of his ears had gone a little red. He took a sip of his drink, and when he’d swallowed and saw Jimmy still staring, elaborated, “I was – er, otherwise preoccupied, shall we say.”

Jimmy smirked. “Oh yes, the delightful American porter.”

Thomas’ blush deepened. “Don’t forget you made me tell you all the details when I came back.”

“Yes, well, I was a repressed little bugger, weren’t I?”

Thomas cleared his throat. “Have you then? I mean.” He tapped his nose. 

Jimmy snorted. He looked out. The hall was full of men and women, smoking and drinking and talking quietly, though in the corner a band was assembling on stage. It was early yet, Jimmy supposed. Finally, he took a sip of his drink and said. “I did – all sorts of powders and tinctures and what have you, Thomas. What else to do when it’s put in front of your nose? Never liked any of it much. Well. Except for whiskey.” He took another sip of his drink, while Thomas watched him. “Half the time that rubbish was laced with Borax and the other half of the time mixed in with something proper strong. Never know what you’re getting, or how it’s going to make you act, which of course – they rather liked that, you know.”

“Jimmy,” Thomas murmured. 

Jimmy found he couldn’t look over at Thomas’ face, because he knew it would be full of infinite kindness. Vaguely, he wanted Thomas to slap him, once, right across the cheekbone, as if that would jostle him back into himself. Instead, he took another swallow of his drink, which finished it, and said, “I wanna -”

“Perhaps we should –,” Thomas began

“Find the place?” Jimmy finished, voice low and pitched from the corner of his mouth. Thomas made a face that meant that wasn’t what he’d intended to say. 

There was a curtained exit towards the back of the hall, tucked into a corner of the room. Jimmy hadn’t been able to take his eyes off it since he’d set foot in the room. 

He took a step forward and felt Thomas’ hand on his shoulder, but he – he could see the curtain, it was red velvet which felt like a joke, a parody of the thing, but Thomas’ touch was there and then not or else he could hardly feel it and he could not stop himself from moving towards that curtain, past the tables and bodies and the waiter with hair the color of corn husks and he had to trust that Thomas was there behind him, following him, like he had been since the first day they’d met. 

He stepped towards the curtain, and tried not to think about - 

The man with the greying mustache had looked at Jimmy like he was already imagining how much it would cost him to get Jimmy on his knees with his mouth around his prick, and the curtain at the back of the hall swayed a little every so often, as if caught in a breeze, or as if by the movement of someone occasional sweeping by it, and Thomas was standing near but not touching him, and every time he’d taken a sip of his drink the man with the greying mustache had watched his throat undulate, Jimmy could feel his eyes on him, and once he’d had a punter who liked to put him on his back at the edge of his bed and feed him his cock so he could watch the way Jimmy’s throat bulged to accommodate the length of it, and he would pet, very gently, at the distention in Jimmy’s throat, and once Jimmy had come so hard with that cock in his mouth and his eyes watering and the man telling him how perfect he looked that when he’d tried to stand up afterwards his legs had shaken and not held his weight and so he’d fell to his knees and let the man pet his head and call him a very good boy which seemed like the natural extension of what had come before and three days later a boy in the street had split his lip for taking one of his regulars and called him a whore like he wasn’t one too and all Jimmy could think was, “I am. I am.”

Sometimes, when he was pressing back for the fuck of Thomas’ cock or fitting his teeth around his own fist while Thomas worked his way inside of him, Jimmy remembered that boy – “Whore,” he’d said, loud like a gunshot, and Jimmy had thought, “Tell me something I didn’t already know about myself.”

Behind the curtain was a long hall, and he vaguely registered Thomas following him through it with a low, faintly hissed, “_Jimmy_.”

“Gentlemen.”

Jimmy spun on his heels. A waiter – well, he was dressed like a waiter – addressed them, the faintness of a German accent just discernible under his smooth English. He smiled. “Are you lost?”

Jimmy tugged at his vest, straightening it and saying with confidence, “We were looking for -”

“The restrooms,” Thomas supplied smoothly at the same time Jimmy said,

“A friend.”

The waiter’s smile notched wider, but not without kindness. “A friend of the Queen’s, perhaps?”

Jimmy swallowed. Thomas was silent behind him. 

Finally, Jimmy said, “A very good friend, yes.”

“Gentlemen, please allow me to escort you to meet your friend. Is this your first time visiting,” he coughed a little, “Berlin?”

“Yes,” Thomas said, stiffly. “Here on business.”

“Of course,” murmured the man. He was wearing a black vest over white shirtsleeves and his lips were shiny as if he’d rubbed them with Vaseline or possibly cooking oil like the boys used to do on their nights at the corners. His eyes were very, very blue. “I do hope that you’ve found our hospitality acceptable,” he continued, still in that smooth, pleased, service voice as he stood to the side of a non-descript wooden door and grasped the brass knob to usher them forward, “and that you continue to enjoy your time with us.”

As the door opened, Thomas angled himself forward smoothly and stepped in before Jimmy. Likely he anticipated a 12-man firing squad on the other side, then. 

What lay beyond the door, however, was not immediately discernible, even after Thomas had moved a little ways into the room. The room was very darkly lit, with soft lamp light emanating from low tables here and there and from the candle sconces positioned along the walls. There were no windows, except at the far end for a sweeping set of French doors draped in heavy fabric that pooled on the floor in eddies of velvet. Faintly, he could hear a woman’s voice singing as if from another room, but when he looked again he saw a Victrola thrumming tenderly on one of the low tables. 

There were also couches and armchairs and even a divan, and on nearly all of them were couples – or, in a few cases, trios – in various stages of intimate embrace. 

“Oh,” Thomas murmured. 

Behind them, the waiter extended a tray with an assortment of drinks – dark liquors in squat tumblers and golden, fizzy champagne in tall flutes – and said, “Please make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen,” in a tone that indicated he would be withdrawing thereafter. 

“Exactly,” Thomas said, turning on the spot, “how?”

The waiter smiled. “You’re blocking the door.”

Thomas’ lip curled.

“Bubbly, I think, don’t you, Thomas?” Jimmy said and neatly snagged two flutes before the waiter could whirl away; at nearly the same time, he drew the back of his knuckles along Thomas’ lapel and, pitching his voice low, murmured, “Come join me over here, won’t you, darling?”

He led them to an oversized armchair upholstered in fabric the exact shade of green that made the flecks of jade in Thomas’ eyes stand out. Nearby, two women in negligees were kissing at the end of a couch. Their hands were under the hem of each other’s skirts. He looked away and turned towards Thomas, who was already looking at him. 

“Sit down,” Jimmy said, and pushed him gently into the armchair. It was overstuffed but firm, which meant that when Jimmy climbed on to his lap, knees on either side of his thighs, he did not sink but was able to buoy himself up with the resistance of the material.

“Look at me,” he said, tipping Thomas’ chin up with one finger from where he was watching his own hands frame Jimmy’s waist. 

“I haven’t looked anywhere else.”

“Is that what you’re afraid of?” He leaned closer so that he could lower his voice, careful still with the champagne. The room was full of sighs and the rustle of clothing, and occasionally, a staccato moan of obvious pleasure. “Worried that I’ll be put out if I see you looking at another boy’s pretty face?”

“I don’t -”

“It’s natural to look.” He leaned back and smiled. “To want to look.” 

“Mm,” Thomas said, not quite meeting Jimmy’s eyes. “You’re quite composed,” he noted, at the same time his hands gave a nervous twitch around Jimmy’s waist. 

“Well,” Jimmy said, and without further preamble slid the contents of the champagne flute down his throat in one swallow. It sparkled along the back of his throat and on the tender insides of his lips. “Not my first time in a room like this, is it?”

Another twitch, this time almost a compulsive soothing motion of his thumb. “Not quite like this,” he said, hopefully. 

Jimmy tilted his head to the side and swept his gaze around the room. On the chaise lounge to his left, two women were draped on either side of a third, exchanging languorous kisses while she watched with hooded eyes; Jimmy’s gaze followed the line of a pale, un-stockinged calf down to the arch of a foot and from there leapt to the adjacent armchair where two dark-haired boys moved against each other in oceanic tumult. When he turned his head in the opposite direction, his eyes landed on a man in a suit leaning against the wall, his hands cupped around the cropped blonde head of a boy kneeling in front of him, bobbing his mouth neatly along the man’s cock. The man’s eyes were slitted in pleasure; his thumb was so gentle on the boy’s ear that Jimmy could practically feel its feather light brush on his own. 

He leaned down and rested his forehead against Thomas’. “Not quite like this.”

Thomas kissed him. The world sang.

They had, occasionally and mostly as a prelude to or in the heat of laying with each other, discussed what this might look like – what each might say and how they would position themselves. How they might entice observers over. 

Still, he wasn’t prepared for the kinetic thrill that thrummed through him when Thomas said softly, “Oh, darling,” in a voice made of quiet pride, “when I tell you, look over your shoulder. There’s a man in a blue suit and I think he’s very much enjoying the picture you make in my lap.”

The need to look over was almost reflexive, but Thomas hadn’t given him permission yet, and his body shuddered with tempered movement. Every inch of his skin felt in turn every fiber of the wool of Thomas’ suit from where he was positioned in his lap, his back to Thomas’ front, his thighs splayed messily across Thomas’ thighs. 

Thomas had undressed him down to his underwear with a kind of reverent unwrapping, and every time Jimmy had reached for the buttons on his vest to reciprocate, Thomas had caught his hand and kissed the tips of his fingers and, wordlessly, Jimmy had sank deeper into the place where he was small, and quiet, and beloved. 

Now, he tipped his head back on Thomas’ shoulder, rubbing his temple against Thomas’ chin in affectionate supplication. The room was not cold, but the fires only reached so far, and Thomas’ fingers on his skin left goosebumps in their wake. His nipples were hard and pebbled and he faintly dreaded and could hardly bear to wait for the moment when Thomas would begin to pay them attention, though he only knew it was coming because Thomas had spent the last several minutes touching him nearly everywhere else on his chest and abdomen. 

His eyes lidded closed as Thomas reached between his legs and cupped him where he was half-hard and faintly aching. Cupped him – his shaft and bollocks all - with his hand. Jimmy’s back arched without his permission, but his mouth knew the way. “Only when you tell me.” His voice sounded like honey in tea, smooth and elastic and about to dissipate. 

“That’s right,” Thomas praised. He ran his other hand down Jimmy’s flank. “Until I say so, yes, kitten?”

_Kitten._ He nearly flinched at the shock of shameful desire, and could feel himself blushing from the bridge of his nose to his sternum. He turned his face into Thomas’ neck and moaned his name, plaintive. 

“You like it when I call you that.” The hand cupping him rolled his cock and bollocks gently, which somehow felt more obscene than if Thomas were fisting his cock. “Tell me how much you like it,” Thomas instructed, voice tight. “How you like it when I call you my sweet little pet.”

“Thomas,” he said, syllables catching on the crenellation of his teeth. Everything felt too sharply wound. He couldn’t – how could he tell him, how could he say it – 

Thomas reached over with his other hand and gently pressed his thumb to the head of Jimmy’s cock, thumbing the foreskin back so that he could rub at the wet head, breathing heavily in Jimmy’s ear, his stiff prick fitted neatly against the seam of Jimmy’s ass, where he desperately wanted to roll back onto it, feel the way the head would catch against the rim of his hole as he pushed himself into the aching pleasure of penetration. 

“I am your pet, Thomas,” he confessed, finally, voice low and raked over and before he could say anything further he dragged one of Thomas’ hands to his mouth and sucked two fingers between his lips, letting his eyes slip closed and his tongue begin to carefully suckle.

Thomas made a noise of pleasure, but his other hand released Jimmy’s bollocks and instead came up to hold firm his jaw and arrest the movement of his suck. “Show me how well you know how to listen,” he murmured, in the quiet, self-assured voice he used when he knew he would be heeded, “or else I shall invite every other man in here to use his prick to fuck this sweet mouth of yours and deny you my own cock.”

Jimmy _sobbed_. 

It was as if the air had been taken out of him, as if he had been licked clean and pure by way of a horrible fire. Quietly and without preamble, Thomas had laid bare the thing he felt most vile for wanting, the thing they had said without saying for this entire trip, the thing he had been asking for and unable to ask for since he had shown up at Thomas’ front door like a lost thing turned towards home. 

He was trembling from head to toe. Thomas gently unhooked his fingers from his mouth. 

“Please let me get on my knees,” he breathed, and faintly flung himself to the ground to kneel between Thomas’ thighs when Thomas nodded his permission. 

He inched forward until his fingers rested on Thomas’ thighs, though Thomas made no attempt to make it easier for him, for which he was profoundly grateful. He leaned forward and nuzzled Thomas’ clothed erection, rubbing first his mouth against the shape of it and then the side of his nose, and then finally his whole face, cheekbone to cheekbone, as if he could get Thomas’ scent on him, as if he were a wild animal marking out his protector, his king, his master. 

Thomas had not spoken since his earlier proclamation, but now he touched Jimmy’s finely-trembling shoulder with his whole palm and spoke. His tone was even and bordering on careless. “You haven’t told me yet why you like it when I call you kitten. Are you trying to tell me you would prefer I let each man in here know the shape of your cunt on his cock, pet?”

Again, a gasped sob came from his mouth and he forced himself to stop nuzzling against Thomas’ beautiful cock, the only cock he really wanted in him ever again, even though he was a former whore who would – if Thomas commanded it – allow himself to be fucked twenty times tonight by strangers’ pricks. He wrenched his gaze upward to meet Thomas’, though he would not yet entirely remove his mouth from where it was making a wet spot on the front of Thomas’ trousers. 

“Thomas,” he mewled. He slid his fingers forward up his thighs as if he could faintly absorb Thomas’ power and strength and affection through his fingertips, and then let his hands curl along Thomas’ waist. “Master,” he breathed, and watched Thomas revel in the title, eyes darkening. 

He did not want Thomas to have to ask again and so even though each word came from a place inside of him he did not want to admit lived most days, he began to speak. “I – am your kitten. Your plaything and pet. If you told me to take other men’s cocks, I would, sir,” here, Thomas’ palm slid up the back of his neck and though his voice wavered at the touch, he continued, “I would – let them treat my mouth like a girl’s cunt, turn it sloppy and wet and bruised, and if they preferred to finish in my own, I would let them.” His voice had taken a high, desperate pitch as he scrambled to explain himself. “Or they could fuck me first and then make me clean up their cock with my mouth, I would do it – for you, only for you, to prove to you that I can – I can be good, Thomas, sir, my love, I can be good for you and only for you forever, even though I was raised to be such,” he gasped over the words, “such a whore.”

Thomas’ nostrils flared as he considered Jimmy’s words. At last, with his hand still on the back of Jimmy’s neck, he said evenly, “But you’re _my_ kitten. My darling. My pet.” He tugged forward and fluidly Jimmy crawled back into his lap, this time facing Thomas chest to chest. He felt ashamed at the proximity of their faces and tried to drop his own against Thomas’ throat but Thomas held him fast and looked into his eyes as he spoke. “Not theirs.” His eyes were very dark. “To whom do you beautifully belong?”

Jimmy could feel his throat going tight and he tried very hard not to think, to stay on the surface of his thoughts, to notice only the feeling of Thomas’ suit against his bare skin, his palm skimming down the ocean of his spine. “I…”

There was, faintly, the sound of Thomas reaching into the pot of Vaseline he had put on the small table next to them when he’d first undressed Jimmy, but mostly Jimmy was focused on the way Thomas was watching him, tenderly and fiercely and with expectation. 

Jimmy swallowed. “I -,” but his voice cracked on the syllable, red and wet and open. 

“Jimmy,” Thomas said, with every affection and consolation, “darling.” He leaned in and kissed him at the same time that he pressed his slick fingers between the globes of Jimmy’s arse. Every point of being in his body began to ache – and to tremble. Thomas was going to fuck him, soon, Thomas was going to let him sink onto his lovely, beautiful cock and all he would be able to think of or know in that moment was the place where their bodies joined together. 

“Oh, please…,” he breathed, trying to inch forward and closer to the warmth of Thomas’ gaze and the breadth of his body, and trying to cant his hips and flare his hole for the fuck of Thomas’ fingers, two of them at once, inching inside of him with painful, exacting pleasure. “Please, I need it,” he sang, his back arching and alight. He would go mad without it.

“Take my cock out,” Thomas instructed, and dizzied by the full fuck-press forward of Thomas’ fingers, Jimmy scrambled to comply, to ease the hot, rigid length of Thomas’ cock from his trousers. It was pink-headed and his mouth began to water at the sight of it, poking between their thighs. 

“I need it,” he said, running his fist along the smooth length, spitting into his palm and touching the slickness to Thomas’ cockhead so that he sucked in a hot breath and hooked his fingers until they pressed against the spot inside of Jimmy that made him cry out, this time a full-throated moan that sounded exactly like what it was – a boy being taken, a boy aching to be fucked, a boy willing to put himself chest down and allow himself to be mounted for the pleasure of it. 

“Yes,” Thomas hissed. 

“Fuck me,” he said, and realized only too late it was an order when Thomas threatened to remove his fingers and he chased after them by arching his hips and moaning, “N_o_, please don’t go, I belong to you, I am only for you, I want only and ever to be fucked by you again, my love, my Thomas,” and though he could see now that Thomas’ face was very red and that he was pressing his lips delicately against Jimmy’s chest even as his fingers moved roughly inside of him, he could not stop the words. “I want -”

I want to be a vessel into which you pour yourself into me, he thought, very clearly, but did not say it.

“You don’t have to want, anymore,” Thomas said, voice finally wrecked sounding and he did remove his fingers from Jimmy’s arse but only long enough so that he could grip him by the hips and usher him forward onto his cock, not waiting, not going slow, instead moving into him in one rough fuck as he pulled Jimmy onto the length of his cock. 

“I love you,” Jimmy said, and did not move an inch for fear of losing any bit of Thomas inside of him. He wrapped both hands around Thomas’ neck and kissed him like it was their last time. Like it was their first time. “I love you like I was cleaned up for it,” he went on, while Thomas’ eyes went wet and soft. “I love you like it’s all gone good again.”

Thomas gave a little wet laugh, a minute hitch of his hips up to feel the place where their bodies fucked together. His hands were enormous and warm on Jimmy’s back, his hips, his flanks. 

“My master,” Jimmy said, because Thomas had taught him what it meant to give someone a gift of your love. He wanted Thomas to be plentiful, all filled up with Jimmy’s love all the time. He sighed and arched back into the fuck of Thomas’ cock, lifting minutely and settling back down. There was hardly anyone else in the room, the man over his shoulder entirely forgotten, only the two of them in this world and the next. He sighed with great, mountainous rolls of pleasure. “Thomas,” he said, “my master.”

Thomas opened his mouth to speak. Thomas had been telling Jimmy he loved him since they had nearly first met, though Jimmy never tired of hearing it and now, with everything raw and stirred, and Thomas’ cock in him and countless eyes pretending to watch or not watch them, he could think of nothing else he wanted Thomas to say to him. He could almost hear the words before Thomas had spoken them, and he hoped a little, that Thomas might call him his pet or his kitten, again. 

Thomas kissed his chin, once, and then the corner of his mouth. His eyes were very soft, his hands very gentle – he was touching the top of Jimmy’s arse with one broad, splayed palm and the other he slid up the arch of Jimmy’s spine until it rested on the back of his neck. “Oh, darling,” he said, very carefully, “No one else is ever going to touch you again.”

Finally, Jimmy began to weep. 

He thought, at first, that he’d been woken by the sharp touch of moonlight on the back of his skull, but he realized that thought was dream-like even as he surfaced out of it. The space next to him in the bed was empty, but before he’d even moved to reach over and touch it to see if it was warm or cool, Thomas was saying quietly to him, “Getting a glass of water, is all,” and there he was – nude, limned in silver light, faintly archaic to Jimmy. 

Twisting onto his back, Jimmy watched him. “So beautiful,” he murmured, and his voice was roughened by sleep and by the way Thomas had, after drying Jimmy’s tears and holding him like a babe cradled against his chest, acquiesced to his wishes and fucked his mouth once more before they’d left the club, this time with Jimmy’s head tipped back and Thomas anchored above him, forearms to the wall. 

They had had an audience for that, and Jimmy had spread his thighs and fucked his fist and felt the electric curl of a second orgasm simply from knowing that everyone could see how Thomas used him, could see how he was Thomas’ to fuck at will, mouth or arse or both. 

The hotel was chilly and he shivered, but then Thomas was kneeing onto the mattress and tumbling forward into his arms, unselfconscious in a way he so rarely was when not half-asleep. He buried his face in Jimmy’s neck and Jimmy curled into him. 

They had been like this, more or less, since returning from the bar, as if they could not really bear to not be touching, except for the walk home where they had stood a foot from each other. 

It had been excruciating. 

“Alright?” 

Jimmy nodded, knowing Thomas could feel it. In the morning, his eyes would likely be puffy from the tears, which had slid steadily along his face while they rocked together, Thomas wiping his cheeks with his thumbs and kissing his cheekbones. Not once had he offered to stop. 

It was the safest he had felt in a very, very long time.

Their train would leave in a few hours. The morning would likely bring with it a flurry of haphazardly packed trunks and forgotten bits and bobs and the need to suffer sharp glares from the porter. Perhaps the crowds would be terrible or perhaps they wouldn’t be. Vaguely, with Thomas’ breath beginning to deepen next to him, Jimmy hoped they’d have enough cigarettes - but mostly he wasn’t thinking of that, not yet, not right now with his skin still smelling soft and clean from the second bath Thomas had drawn him when they’d returned home to their hotel room a few hours earlier. 

Thomas nuzzled at his jaw. “Let me,” he said, muffled and half-asleep and vaguely indiscernible but Jimmy let him – let him turn him on his side and curve around his back, arm across his hip and fingers curled protectively against his belly, let him soak up all the love and goodness Jimmy had to offer him, let Thomas meet it with his own in kind. 

The moonlight was bright enough that it could keep him awake if he wanted it to, but then Thomas said, in a soft hush of breath, “Sleep, my love,” and Jimmy remembered who he had chosen as master and to whom he beautifully belonged, and he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading! Feedback of all kinds welcome. I treasure your comments and reactions! <3
> 
> "To whom do you beautifully belong?" is a line from a play by Henry James. Never was able to forget that line after I read it and much of the tone of this fic, and Jimmy and Thomas' attitudes towards belonging and service, is attributable to it. Hence the tangential epigraph from Colm Tóibín's The Master, a novel about Henry James and also about longing and repression, two of my fave topics. 
> 
> Feel free to come yell at me on [tumblr.](silkcoeur.tumblr.com)


End file.
